Mad Girl's Love Song
by the Chronic Meltdown
Summary: Rachel is twelve when the memories start coming back. Meeting Quinn only serves as a catalyst and, much to her surprise, she finds herself alone in her infatuation when the youngest Fabray refuses, subconsciously or not, to remember. -Past lives fic.-


Mad Girl's Love Song

"_I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.  
I lift my lids and all is born again.  
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"  
_-Sylvia Path

**p**rologue

Rachel dreams of a girl she's never met during the entire summer before she moves to Lima, Ohio.

She's twelve at the time and while she's been raised to be open-minded, it still freaks her out, a little. She's always been attracted to boys so it comes as a complete surprise when this girl becomes all she can think about. And in her dreams, the girl smiles at her. In her dreams, the girl is around her age, and has eyes so sweet and so beautiful they make her heart ache. In her dreams, there is a tangible tenderness in the air, with every innocent brush of skin, with every slow, impossibly charming curve of the lips.

Rachel finds herself utterly fascinated in a way she's never been, before. Even her eternal devotion to Barbra Streisand pales in comparison to what she feels for this girl.

This girl, whom she's never met before. This girl, whom she never imagined could possibly exist.

So when she finds her in the relatively small town of Lima, in the state of Ohio, she is so awestruck that all she can do is stare.

-o-

At thirteen, Quinn Fabray is already well on her way to becoming the head bitch in charge she will be when she's sixteen.

She's naturally beautiful and is already extraordinarily popular. Boys like Finn Hudson get nervous around her and those like Noah Puckerman puff up their chests and strut about like they're the best things since sliced bread. Either way, the point is that they like her and that, when high school comes, the path is set for her to dominate the school. When high school comes, she'll be completely in _control_.

It's funny, though. She never counts on Rachel Berry's arrival and, as such, is unprepared for all that comes with knowing her.

It's why, when the time comes and she is blessed (_or perhaps cursed_) with a shattered understanding of what had always been there, written between the lines, all she can do is swerve into oncoming traffic and hope for the best.

-o-

Quinn Fabray is sitting in the front row, organizing her desk, when there's a sudden lull in the conversation.

The blonde child looks up curiously and finds a girl, presumably her age, with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her nose is her most attention-grabbing feature. It's big, but she's pretty either way.

_A Jew…_, her mind thinks, almost accusingly.

But then her eyes find the girl's clothing, and all other things are forgotten. It takes all she has not to burst out laughing. The sweater's probably the most hideous thing she's ever seen in her life.

This is why it doesn't surprise her at all when Dave Karofsky, the school's resident bully, speaks up and says, "Nice sweater. What are you, a first grader?"

The room bursts into laughter, and Quinn can see the girl's doe eyes widen, just a little. She is clearly affronted, but instead of ducking her head down in embarrassment, she does the complete opposite of what she should. In a small act of defiance, the brunette girl only holds her head higher and, gathering her books tighter against her chest, moves past the doorway and steps towards the only free seat, next to Quinn's own. The blonde child feels a small swell of respect for this display of bravery, but it doesn't stop her from giggling along with the rest of her classmates.

Still, her laughter freezes in her throat like liquid tossed into subzero temperatures when the girl glances her way and meets her eyes.

It's like someone's dropped a plugged-in electrical appliance into the shallow pond of her life. The smile drops off her face. Something that's a lot like vomit lodges in her throat. The acid burns her, making her fingernails dig hopelessly against the wooden surface of her desk. She feels sick.

The clatter of books hitting the floor startles her enough to look away, and instantly, she feels a little better, but it's only by a little. There are still goose bumps riddled all over her body. She still feels shaken.

She doesn't even experience the urge to laugh when she realizes the girl is the one who dropped her books, and that she's embarrassed and on her knees, scrambling to pick them up, directly in front of Quinn's desk. She is flustered and her hands are shaking as she stacks things up into two different piles. For a brief second, Lima's youngest Fabray feels the urge to help her. Then it's gone, and all she can think about is how she wishes the bell would ring, if only to escape the other girl's presence.

She later learns that her name is Rachel Berry, that she's still twelve, and that she has two, obviously gay, dads.

Santana also mentions that she stares a lot, and that it's mainly in her direction.

This, above all other things, is what scares her. So she begins to tease her.

"What are you staring at, RuPaul?"

-o-

Fast forward to the future.

-o-

Quinn finds the eighth message tucked inside her bag. Her heart swells as she takes it in her hands, as she crumples it, trying to make it as small as possible. She tries to act as she would in any other occasion, calm and confident, cool and collected, so as to draw as little attention to herself as she possibly can.

She dodges Santana, who glares at her because she isn't used to being ignored (_and recently, she's been getting too snappy, too ahead of herself, like she thinks she's the one who deserves to be on top, and Quinn briefly thinks she should do something about it soon, before something happens that they'll both regret_), and when Finn approaches her, she tells him to go on ahead, to glee club, without her, because she forgot a notebook in her classroom and she needs to go and get it. And he smiles at her, and kisses her on the cheek, and tells her to hurry up because he has a surprise for her.

For a moment, she thinks him sweet, but then she remembers the letter, and she stops caring. She makes a beeline for the bathroom, enters it, and locks herself in the last stall in the row.

She unfurls the letter, reads the message.

In moments like these, she is no longer McKinley's golden haired poster child, working to keep up appearances. In moments like these, she is Quinn, just Quinn, without the Fabray family name to hold her down; she is just Quinn, who does not define herself by the grades she gets, by how other people see her, by the fact that her boyfriend is star quarterback. In moments like these, she is happy being _just Quinn_, without the Fabray, because she feels like her own person.

She feels like she's just Quinn, and in moments like these, when she has a letter in her hands, when she's thinking of brown hair and bright eyes, and a voice that soars, she thinks that maybe that's okay. That maybe she's adequate, as just Quinn. That maybe people's expectations aren't as important as she's always thought them to be.

That, just once, it might be okay to fail. (_Because she is fundamentally flawed, but maybe accepting this flaw is what will make her life complete._)

And it's simple. It's just one line.

_I love the way you are._

It is written in the same messy handwriting she has become so obsessed with.

It is just one line. A single sentence.

It is a simple, single, six word sentence, yet it makes her curl in on herself, pressing her hand to her chest like she's having a heart attack, and she heaves, and maybe the truth is that she is because it hurts, there, inside her chest, and she's not sure what else it could be.

She's not sure what else it could be, but her nails dig into her skin with the force of it, and she's clenching her eyes shut against the tide of it, so maybe, just maybe, it's a heart attack.

-o-

Sometime in the past (_and later off into the still unsteady future_), Rachel thinks that Quinn, though often very cruel, is the most beautiful girl in the world.

It doesn't matter that the girl hurts her feelings with every carefully constructed insult. It doesn't matter that she cries herself to sleep almost every night because something in her chest feels tight and miserable. It doesn't matter that the feeling gets a little worse every time she finds herself looking into malicious hazel eyes.

She still dreams of her. She still dreams of the Quinn who looks at her with unadulterated adoration. She still dreams, and it's why she doesn't understand it.

She doesn't _get it_, because she _feels it_. She feels this utter certainty, this _conviction_, that she and Quinn had always been meant to be friends.

So why aren't they? Why, when the girl in her dreams is exactly the same as the girl outside of them?

Why, when she's sure that, in that moment, when their eyes had met for the first time, Quinn had felt it too?

* * *

**A/N: **I am so excited for the next season. It starts four days after my birthday. I'll be seventeen.

But anyway. This is a way to revive my muse. My promises probably sound cheap by now, but I'll work on it, I swear. I'm just kind of thinking of waiting before updating TB or EoB, because I want to know the new characters. You know? I'll work with it.

For now, though, this is my love child. And, er, the other parent- well, the other parent is a mystery. =/ Let's go with immaculate conception. Hahaha. (I'm flunking a history test tomorrow.)

See you guys later.

Oh, and by the way? This was inspired by a video on Youtube titled Rachel&Quinn / What if the storm ends? It's great. Really.


End file.
